June 27, 2022 camera trap image of puma monitored by Ramiro Pereira and Álvaro Saralegui near Valle de Lunarejo, a protected area in northern Uruguay. (Photo by Ramiro Pereira and Álvaro Saralegui)
Since January of last year, a pair of park rangers in Uruguay have managed to monitor a puma (Puma concolor) with camera traps set up in a northern region of ravines, hills covered with thick native vegetation and afforested land. The men are now seeking funding to outfit the large cat with an electronic tracking collar so they can follow its movements more closely. The puma’s home range is in Rivera department, close to the Brazilian border and near a 30,000-hectare (74,000-acre) Uruguayan protected area called Valle de Lunarejo, says Ramiro Pereira, a biologist who works as a park ranger at a different protected area on the Uruguayan coast called Laguna Garzón. The images obtained in the project last year address longstanding doubts about whether any pumas remain Uruguay. The monitoring has shown that at least one appears to be alive and well. Pereira and fellow park guard... [Log in to read more]
